Wednesday, January 17, 2007

I spoke too soon

Dammit, I am going to have to learn to stop saying what our record will be if we win the next game. I honestly think it's bad luck. Case in point, losing to the Sonics last night.

Seattle was barely over .500 at home and the Cavaliers are the best team in the East. But yet, we still lost. And frankly, I can't seem to figure out how this one got away from us.

I could go over the stats until I'm blue in the face and I could probably find a few low points that held us down. But the simple fact is, we are LEADING THE EASTERN CONFERENCE. We should NEVER let a game like this one get away from us. And until we learn to beat the teams we are supposed to beat on a consistent basis, we will still be second fiddle to the Pistons and the Spurs of the world.

Anyway, we have another "should win" tonight. The Portland Trailblazers are 15-24 and only 8-12 at home. But the Cavs are 3-7 on the second night of back-to-back games this year. Something's gotta break. Learn to beat the teams you should beat, Cavs......

Meanwhile, in Columbus, the Cavaliers take on the Northwestern Wildcats, who are almost always buried in the lower regions of the Big Ten standings. Eleven Warriors referred to their "Princeton offense", and what that means is that it'll take patience to knock them off. They will play ball-control and use a lot of back-door passes to score. But their leading scorer is on the injury block.

I look for Greg Oden to dominate on offense and he will find himself being worked over on defense. We'll have to go to zone several times, because any thoughts of man-to-man will be shot down with the aforementioned back-door passes and well-executed screens.